November 2014 I just reached 19 weeks. That very same day I had contractions and went to the ER. When I got there my water broke and I began bleeding a lot. The doctor told me my baby could no longer survive without the water bag to protect it and that I had to have surgery to terminate the pregnancy due to the fact that I had a vertical cut on my uterus with my previous preemie baby ( my miracle child), and vaginal delivery would rupture my uterus. I never got to find out the gender nor did I get to name that baby.

April 2016 4 months into 3rd pregnancy, I had a miscarriage.

October 2, 2016 [I was pregnant for the fourth time]. At 19 weeks and 4 days, contractions started and I went to the hospital immediately. The plan was to do a rescue cerclage if my contractions didn’t continue the rest of the night. The next day my hopes were shot and my contractions kept coming and I was 1 cm dilated. At 11:35 a.m. I gave birth to my son. It was too late to do a surgery, so we took our chances with a vaginal delivery and it all went well except for the fact that I lost my son at 12:35 p.m. When he was born the doctors asked me if I wanted to hold him or if I wanted them to take him away. I wanted to hold him, love him, and pray for him while we still had the time to spend with him.

My husband couldn’t handle to cut his umbilical cord, and didn’t want to hold him but I made him hold our angel baby. I knew he would regret not being able to hold him while he was still alive, and I’m glad I made him hold our baby. He died in his daddy/s arms, and I took him back to hold him. I placed him on my chest and kept singing a song I’d always make him listen to while he was in my tummy, hoping and praying for some sort of miracle. Tons of questions [are] going on in my head. Why me? Is it me? What could I have done differently? Where is God when we need him the most? Why is he ignoring me and my prayers? October 14th we buried our angel baby in a cemetery called Baby Land. My mother-in-law had our bishop come over to give me a comfort blessing and all it did was help me sleep better at night. It wasn’t until October 28th that I finally let go of all the emotions I was holding in, stress and frustration triggered it all.

I went church Sunday and the talk helped me a lot. They talked about how we never understand why God works the way He does, but we have to trust that there is a blessing that will come out of it. He puts us through hardships to prepare us for whatever He has planned for us in the near future. He doesn’t let us go through heartbreaks without giving us a blessing out of it. I’m still waiting for redemption, but for now, I’m okay. For now, I’m focusing on me, letting my body heal physically emotionally, and mentally. Our babies were just too beautiful for Earth, and although they did not get to experience this painful yet magical place we call Earth, I like to believe they are in a much better, peaceful place. My favorite quote, “The road isn’t paved with perfection, don’t get lost in the journey, let the struggle help you discover who you really are.” May our angels babies rest in love. Never forgotten.[Read more…]

If I had to describe child loss using a word, my word would be painful.

And not like I broke my arm and it was painful or my pet passed away and it was painful; this pain is actually quite indescribable. You know when people describe their sadness and say they are “heartbroken,” well let me tell you, the moment I lost my sweet Adrienne, I literally felt my heart break. I felt as if my heart was ripped out of my chest. I felt like I couldn’t breath and I remember asking myself, how am I supposed to live the rest of my life without my child? I questioned my faith, I remember crying to my husband and telling him how sorry I was, and how unfair it was because I wanted her so bad. I loved her. She had been apart of me, of us for 26 weeks and the only time I ever got to hold her in my arms, was to say goodbye.[Read more…]

March 26, 2016 was supposed to be a normal day. My four year old daughter, Kayleigh, had her first t-ball practice and my husband and I were excited to watch her. The very next day was Easter and I would officially be 28 weeks pregnant. I was happy that I would finally be in my third trimester with our second daughter, Kara. We were looking forward to welcoming her into our family in June. Kayleigh was excited to have a little sister. We were so happy. Little did we know that our entire world would come crashing down on us and it would turn into the worst day of our lives.

I lost my beautiful son Jonah on Valentine’s day of this year. I found out he had an omphalocele at 12 weeks. An omphalocele is a fairly rare birth defect in which some or all of the abdominal organs are in the baby’s umbilical cord and do not go into the abdomen. Sometimes the birth defect is related to chromosome issues such as Trisomy 13.

Hi there men and women of the world. Thank you for reading, on the subject of the loss of a baby. I’m not going to lie, losing a loved one in any way, shape or form is horrible. It’s actually pretty shit… that is the best way to sum up the loss of a loved one in a few simple words. It’s completely shit. But to lose a tiny human that you’ve prayed, cried and taken many, many, many pregnancy tests for is beyond a feeling or emotion that I can describe. [Read more…]

It was a Tuesday morning. I felt sick and I felt exhausted. I couldn’t sleep the night before because I had a weird feeling in my stomach. While I was at work, I asked my mom if she could get me some medicine from the store. I explained my symptoms to her and chalked it off as just getting a cold or the flu. Her first question was, “Well have you started your period?” So….. I thought back, and No!

Actually I was 5 days late! But, I had been known to have irregular periods so I didn’t think too much about it. Plus I take the pill, so there is no way that could be an option. So when I got home on my lunch break, there was a bag from the drugstore with Dayquil, cough drops and a pregnancy test. I thought, “Yeah right, there is no way, but she bought it so I will take it.”[Read more…]

Cameron Wesley was a miracle baby. He was my second pregnancy, I was diagnosed with placenta previa and doctors told me I would have a c-section, which frightened me. Around 30 weeks, my placenta had moved and everything started to turn. [Read more…]

Up until reaching 33 weeks, my pregnancy had been great. Super easy with very little to no symptoms. I never had morning sickness with her and the heartburn everyone talks about? I was never lucky enough to experience that either. On February 11th, I started noticing strange discharge when I went to the bathroom. It didn’t look normal and at first I thought it was my mucus plug. I researched everything I could find on the internet, which of course is a always a bad idea. I decided it was best to go to the doctor just in case. I called the doctor’s office and they suggested I come in to just make sure that it wasn’t signs of pre-term labor.[Read more…]

When you’re younger, you think about your life and whether or not you want to have children. You might already know you want them so you imagine being pregnant with your cute little bump, a lovely baby shower with your closest friends and family, and then you daydream about what your little one will be like and whether they will look like Mommy or Daddy, who they will grow up to be and so on. Never does it cross anyone’s mind that the child you have longed for, planned for, waited to welcome into this world, would be gone so quickly and there would be nothing you could do.

My husband and I found out we were 6 weeks pregnant in March of 2014. We were so excited. Shortly afterwards, I had a few concerns with my pregnancy and I went to the ER. Come to find out I had a placenta abruption. The doctors told me it would either resolve on its own or get worse. Only time would tell. So time went on and things were fine until I was about 12 weeks, I had another round of issues so I decided to be seen again. It was the same problem, it hadn’t gotten worse but it hadn’t resolved either. The doctor sent me home on mild bed rest. Things went well again and we found out we had a healthy growing baby boy.

We were going to call her Itty, Bitty, Liddie. Her real name was Lydia Mae. She was perfect! It’s funny how when you become pregnant, your imagination runs wild. You think about what they will look like and whose personality they will have. What funny things will they do? All of it. But you never imagine, what if they don’t make it? What if we lose our child? At least that’s one thing I didn’t imagine. How does anyone get through that? Well, Kevin and I have to. We lost Lydia when I was 26 weeks pregnant. It was our worst nightmare and something I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy. [Read more…]

My name is Kim and I am the proud mother of a beautiful baby boy, Keaton Scott. I am sharing our story in hopes to encourage other mothers to listen to their “inner mama voice” if they have any concerns or worries during their pregnancy. I also want to let other families impacted by congenital CMV know they are not alone.

On March 28, 2014, at 4:34PM, my husband and I became proud parents of a beautiful baby boy, Tremayne Lewis Randolph Parker, Jr affectionately known as TJ. TJ was born 26 weeks premature, through emergency c-section, weighing 1lb 2.69oz. He has delivered at Christiana Hospital and was a patient in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) until he passed away in my arms on the morning of May, 1, 2014.

At 18 years old, my boyfriend and I found out that we would be expecting a child. I immediately fell in love with baby growing inside of me. I would sit up all night and talk to the baby that I called “Mommy’s little pumpkin.” I’d always say, “No you were not planned but you’re still welcome all the same” and say how much I loved him/her. At around what was supposed to 19 weeks, I had a dream that I miscarried my baby at 4 months. Since I was supposedly 5 months along, I made no big deal of it. That was until I went to the doctor & they said I was indeed only 4 months along and that we would be having a beautiful baby girl whom we decided to name Mikayla Danielle.

We became pregnant with Eva in May of 2012, and she was a baby we wanted very much. She was our third baby and third pregnancy. My previous pregnancies had been blessedly uneventful and complication-free, so were completely blindsided when I started bleeding heavily at almost six weeks pregnant. I was devastated, certain I must be having a miscarriage. We went to the ER the next day, and after doing a lot of tests and ultrasounds, they found a strong heartbeat and a growing baby. It was such an unexpected relief! The doctor said that bleeding in early pregnancy is common, usually happens when the placenta implants, and he gave us reason to hope, saying that there was about a 50/50 chance that the bleeding would stop and everything would be fine. [Read more…]

After being a single mom for three years to my son, Jayden, I found myself pregnant with baby number two! I was so excited and so happy to have another bundle of joy on the way. My first pregnancy was extremely stressful due to being on bed-rest. First for placenta previa and then for preterm labor, so my doctors were automatically on guard my second pregnancy. Things were smooth sailing until I hit 20 weeks, when I began to leak a small amount of amniotic fluid. I was put on bed-rest and put on Brethine to stop labor since contractions had started right around the time my water began to leak.

My husband, Patrick, and I met on August 22, 2010. We both quickly realized that this was different than any other relationship that had come before. We fell in love fast and were engaged in April of 2011. We got married on the one year anniversary of our first “official date” on August 27th, 2011. We both knew we really wanted kids, but thought we should wait one year before officially “trying.” It was August 25th, 2012, when I first saw those two pink lines. We were so excited! August was definitely a good month for us! We went through all of the normal first time parent’s excitement and nervousness. We read books, we shopped for baby clothes, we did everything you’re supposed to do. Every kick, every heartbeat were all amazing and brought so much joy. We were so filled with love for this tiny little person. We were in awe.

I was pregnant with my first son in 2008 when my water broke at 16 weeks and I lost him. I was numb to the pain of this miscarriage, mainly because the people around me convinced me that I would get pregnant again and not to worry. It hurt me, but I didn’t allow myself to grieve. [Read more…]

It was October when I took a pregnancy test. I remember taking it at work. It was positive and I was like, that’s not possible. My husband and I had just starting trying in September. Being so shocked, I decided to take another one; it too was positive. I couldn’t contain my excitement and just had to tell my husband. I called him at work and he was ecstatic, as I knew he would be. We never imagined getting pregnant so quickly and we also never imagined losing Caleb so quickly. It is still so unreal. This week will be 8 weeks and it feels like yesterday that I was pregnant [at time of writing]. It all seems like a terrible dream.

I look at pictures of myself while I was pregnant, just a short 5 months ago [at time of writing]. I can’t help but think that I was so young back then; I have hardly aged since the pictures were last taken, but my heart now bears the weight of what seems like a million losses. It took nearly two years for my husband and I to get pregnant. Our babies were the fruition of the emotional and physical turmoil of IVF, and they were taken from us. And yet, they were worth every single second of despair and frustration.